Unfinished Still…

I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten…Joel 2:25

On Monday I painted our small main floor half-bath. Frankly, I would prefer to paint an airport than a small bathroom. The detail work is ridiculously tedious and the limited space never allows the artist to go wild with his trusty roller. I digress…

Bottom Line: It took all day, and wasn’t completely finished until Wednesday morning.

As I began to do the trim work (as seen in the picture), it struck me that in some way we are like a room that is being painted, only during the course of the project it is sometimes difficult to see the end result. There are misses (normally detected by the Mrs.) and messes (more on my pants, shirt and hands than the floor). And when you’re painting with a dark semi-gloss, one coat is never enough (During my senior year of high school and first year of college I mixed paint and still love the vocabulary – latex, trim, primer, satin, flat, enamel, SEMI-GLOSS… Impressed?).

Unfinished was the title of my first post five years ago, Monday I was reminded that it still applies. Trust me, the paint is still wet…

For us, we look in the mirror and see the smears and the parts that remain so… well, unfinished! And we are left to wonder if it will ever be right. Sometimes discouragement finds its way in, because deep down we want to be complete and without blemish. We want to see the final product.

The funny thing about painting however, is that what makes the room look ugly – initially at least – is not the old paint, but the new. In other words, the room looks fine until you start ‘ruining’ it with what eventually will make it lovelier than it was before you started.

What we have to resolve is that what it will one day be is worth what it looks like until it is. Can you do this?

Friend, God’s work in us isn’t busy work. It is full-throated, uncompromising restoration. What we were all along intended to be is never far from His gaze. He not only delights in what we will one day be, but also in who we are in Jesus until that day arrives.